Which is more disturbing? The unholy alliance of Starbucks, The Black Eyed Peas, and Sergio Mendes releasing mediocre crap, or the same unholy alliance releasing music which is actually… well… good? Might there come a time when we look forward to a trip to McCoffee to eagerly fork over $17.99 for a CD along with our $6 hazelnut lo-caf Fripperccino? Could this be the brave new world of music in the 21st Century?

Is the new CD Timeless the despicable bastard offspring of synergistic Uber-bland Korporate Kulture, or could it be a true breath of musical fresh air, sneaking into the caffeinated American heartland on a hip-hop Trojan horse cantering to a Samba beat? You can listen and decide for yourself right now at sergiomendestimeless.com. I’m particularly enjoying the track Yes Yes Y’all, which has taken Left-Coast tastemakers KCRW by storm a full two months in advance of its February 14th release.

We can take cold comfort in the fact that this new CD is not as good as Sergio Mendes 1992 outing Brasileiro, in which he first combined hip-hop ideas with Bahian rhythms. This fantastic track What Is This? is taken from that release. You can find Brasileiro here (for about the price of two cappuccinos), and pre-order Timeless here.

Trinidadian calypso master Slinger Francisco, better known as Mighty Sparrow or The Birdie, turned seventy this year but shows no signs of slowing down. He just played the Apollo Theater here in Harlem and is in the middle of an East Coast tour right now. The Supreme Serenader has had an extraordinary career spanning almost fifty years and has also been a tireless crusader against injustice everywhere.

I’m taking this from the 1982 WOMAD Music And Rhythm double album. You can find this song on the 2001 CD Frenzy, which is available from the artist’s web site here. The site also has a complete discography and much more information about this remarkable man.

Sometimes you just need to hear all those Brazillian girls singing in unison over guitars and percussion. This track is unusual in it’s rubato feel and relative lack of groove, making it even more haunting. It comes from the sensational Afro Sambas, Baden Powell’s collaboration with poet Vinícius de Moraes. This is the 1990 re-recording of the 1966 masterpiece.

While the 1966 recording is long out-of-print and remains something of a holy grail for Brazillian music aficionados, you can find the 1990 version here. Another fantastic Baden Powell record is Seresta Brasileira which is available here.

Another advance leak from the mythical Earl of Edgecombe Summer Mix, which will be dropping here or somewhere nearby in it’s entirety before September. Hopefully.

In addition to Gwen and Miles, there are a few fragments of Angelique Kidjo’s Summertime, and a major contribution from several thousand Dead Sea Crickets which I recorded in the West Bank in 1985. The sounds of summer…

If you’re in a bibliographical mood you can find Gwen Stefani’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby. here, and the Miles comes from Porgy & Bess which is here. Angelique Kijdo’s version of Summertime is here. And the Dead Sea Crickets are here.

John Cale, the master tap-dancer himself, recorded this song with Eno in 1989, for his record Words For The Dying. The story goes that it was this song that led them to embark together on Wrong Way Up, the excellent record on which they almost killed each other. Regardless, this is a lovely song, combining Cale’s wistful lyricism and Eno’s lush pulsing thing.

My mother was an acquaintance of Cale’s, and she once told me

“That John Cale, he always smelled of old fur.”

You can buy Words For The Dying here. A better record overall is last year’s excellent Hobosapiens, which is here. And of course, Wrong Way Up is essential.

Charlie Haden is not only one of the founding fathers of free jazz and a sublime bass player, he is also a great composer. My favorite Haden composition is the transcendent, gorgeous, spacious, circular, Silence. This version is played on solo bandoneon, from Saluzzi’s 1985 release Once Upon A Time - Far Away In The South. Haden played bass on the record, but left bandoneon master Saluzzi alone on this track.

The CD is hard to find these days, but you can order it directly from ECM. Charlie Haden’s most recent record is Land of the Sun. Dino Saluzzi has a nice site along with his son, the guitarist Jose Saluzzi.

It’s not easy to trump Serge Gainsbourg, but Angelique Kidjo does it here by throwing his faux-Africain sensibility back in his face and answering his smarty-pants insouciance with true heartbreak.

This is the closing track from her spectacular 2002 outing Black Ivory Soul, which combined influences from her native Benin and the Bahian region of Brazil. You can buy Black Ivory Soul here. The artist’s Web site is here.

Has Caetano Veloso ever made a bad record? Has he ever even made a mediocre one? I mean, Michael Jackson has his ups and downs, but Caetano pretty much hits the bullseye every time.

Although, usually my least favorite stuff is when he sings in English. Caetano, not Michael. Like that last record, A Foreign Sound, was verging on that “singing in English to break into the North American market” thing. But anyway, this track right here is in English and it all works out great.

There are many CDs simply named Caetano Veloso, so it can get confusing, but Billie-Jean/Eleanor Rigby is taken from this acoustic outing recorded in New York in 1986.

While we’re all tripping over ourselves in the stampede to blog about Baile Funk, let’s not just forget about the São Paulo Old Skool. Racionais MC’s have been laying it on thick since the early 90’s, railing against The System, selling a lot of records, and shipping excellent tracks like this one, taken from their 2002 Double CD Nada Como Um Dia Após O Outro Dia. These guys opened for Public Enemy in 1991 at the Ibirapuera Stadium, were arrested for incitation of violence when another large show ended in a riot, and went on to win MTV Brasil’s Best Rap Group and Audience’s Choice awards.

A shout-out to Mark Harrington for playing me this stuff back when I still thought favelas were beans.

Nada Como Um Dia Após O Outro Dia is available from Amazon as an overpriced import.